“I very well could have been there,” said Paul Christensen, a Prince George man who has donated $1,500 to the tiny house project at Moccasin Flats.
Volunteers, led by carpenter Brad Gustafson and assistant Phillip Fredriksson, are currently building shelters including a bunkhouse and tiny home shelters for people living at the Moccasin Flats encampment.
Christensen, who is retired, heard about the project and felt compelled to contribute.
“This whole deal is a little bit near and dear to my heart in some ways so I made a donation… a pretty sizeable one,” he said.
“It's not that I'm rich or I'm doing well or anything like that. I've actually had a pretty rough go of it but on the overall, you know, I say that whole homelessness thing is near and dear to my heart.”
He said if it wasn’t for family and the Canadian social safety net, he could have become homeless himself.
“I mean, addiction is not just drugs, it’s cigarettes and alcohol and street drugs. Prescription drugs is another one and it’s probably the hardest drugs I ever got off of,” said Christensen.
“For me, that all ended up in a stroke. There’s a 20 to 25 year hole in my memory and an ever changing cocktail of anti-depressants and during that time I was an effing mess.”
Christensen said he got hit by a tree when he was 20 and broke his back, which was then followed by a series of concussions.
“In hindsight, I can say everything kind of went sideways then and shortly after that I got put on anti-depressants.”
He said on top of the anti-depressants he started drinking and using recreational drugs.
“I could have slipped right off the rails had it not been for family. Then it was the social safety net when I had my stroke,” he said.
Christensen said after his stroke as an outpatient he found a doctor who didn’t think he should be on the anti-depressants he was on and two years later he was off of them and began seeking support from the Brain Injured Group.
“We all like to be a little bit superior-istic. You know, ‘I'm better than you’ kind of thing but a lot of people don't really want to have a good hard look at themselves,” said Christensen.
He said he feels compassion for those living at Moccasin Flats and suspects that many unhoused people could also be struggling with the aftermath of a brain injury or serious concussion.
“To those that bemoan Moccasin flats, where else are you going to put them?” asked Christensen. “It’s a community, you know, that group of people, as dysfunctional as it is, it’s a community within itself.”
The GoFundMe that’s supporting volunteers to build shelters in Moccasin Flats has also raised $5,000 so far, which has exceeded the original goal of $1,000 to help with supplies.
